The Center for Studies in the Wesleyan Tradition is sponsoring a lecture by Dr. Randy Maddox called, Frank Baker: The Fruition of Three Scholarly Passions, in celebration of the 45th anniversary of the founding of the center and the 25th anniversary of Frank Baker's death. The event is open to the public.

Randy Maddox is the William Kellon Quick Professor Emeritus of Wesleyan and Methodist Studies at Duke Divinity School. His scholarly interests focus on the theology of John and Charles Wesley and theological developments in the later Methodist/Wesleyan tradition. His numerous publications include Responsible Grace: John Wesley’s Practical Theology, editor of Aldersgate Reconsidered, Rethinking Wesley’s Theology for Contemporary Methodism, The Cambridge Companion to John Wesley. Maddox is currently the institute secretary of the Oxford Institute of Methodist Theological Studies and serves as general editor of the Wesley Works Editorial Project. He served previously as president of the Wesleyan Theological Society, co-chair of the Wesley Studies Group of the American Academy of Religion, and general editor of the Kingswood Books Imprint of Abingdon Press. 

The Rev. Dr. Frank Baker (1910–99), a native of Hull, England, joined the faculty of Duke University in 1960 and assumed the role of general editor of the newly-launched Wesley Works Editorial Project. Over the next twenty years Baker established himself as a premier scholar of the Wesleyan traditions, and Duke Divinity School as a leading center for such study. On his retirement in December 1979 the Divinity School announced the founding of The Center for Studies in the Wesleyan Tradition, as a means of continuing the scholarly study of historical and contemporary Wesleyan traditions that Baker emulated.